The night was warm under a slowly-floating moon.  Full of compassion for the poor girl, who had moved him if she had failed in winning the assembly, Wilfrid stepped into the garden, where he expected to find her, and to be the first to pet and console her.  Threading the scented shrubs, he came upon a turn in one of the alleys, from which point he had a view of her figure, as she stood near a Portugal laurel on the lawn.  Mr. Pericles was by her side.  Wilfrid’s intention was to join them.  A loud sob from Emilia checked his foot.

“You are cruel,” he heard her say.

“If it is good, I tell it you; if it is bad; abominable, I tell it you, juste ze same,” responded Mr. Pericles.

“The others did not think it very bad.”

“Ah! bah!” Mr. Pericles cut her short.

Had they been talking of matters secret and too sweet, Wilfrid would have retired, like a man of honour.  As it was, he continued to listen.  The tears of his poor little friend, moreover, seemed to hold him there in the hope that he might afford some help.

“Yes; I do not care for the others,” she resumed.  “You praised me the night I first saw you.”

“It is perhaps zat you can sing to z’ moon,” returned Mr. Pericles.  “But, what! a singer, she must sing in a house.  To-night it is warm, to-morrow it is cold.  If you sing through a cold, what noise do we hear?  It is a nose, not a voice.  It is a trompet.”

Emilia, with a whimpering firmness, replied:  “You said I am lazy.  I am not.”

“Not lazy,” Mr. Pericles assented.

“Do I care for praise from people who do not understand music?  It is not true.  I only like to please them.”

“Be a street-organ,” Mr. Pericles retorted.

“I must like to see them pleased when I sing,” said Emilia desperately.

“And you like ze clap of ze hands.  Yez.  It is quite natural.  Yess.  You are a good child, it is clear.  But, look.  You are a voice uncultivated, sauvage.  You go wrong:  I hear you:  and dese claps of zese noodels send you into squeaks and shrills, and false! false away you go.  It is a gallop ze wrong way.”

Here Mr. Pericles attempted the most horrible reproduction of Emilia’s failure.  She cried out as if she had been bitten.

“What am I to do?” she asked sadly.

“Not now,” Mr. Pericles answered.  “You live in London?—­at where?”

“Must I tell you?”

“Certainly, you must tell me.”

“But, I am not going there; I mean, not yet.”

“You are going to sing to z’ moon through z’ nose.  Yez.  For how long?”

“These ladies have asked me to stay with them.  They make me so happy. 
When I leave them—­then!”

Emilia sighed.

“And zen?” quoth Mr. Pericles.

“Then, while my money lasts, I shall stay in the country.”

“How much money?”

“How much money have I?” Emilia frankly and accurately summed up the condition of her treasury.  “Four pounds and nineteen shillings.”